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The Grim Reefer sends this news from an Associated Press report:
"The Arctic isn't nearly as bright and white as it used to be because of more ice melting in the ocean, and that's turning out to be a global problem, a new study says. With more dark, open water in the summer, less of the sun's heat is reflected back into space. So the entire Earth is absorbing more heat than expected, according to a study (abstract) published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That extra absorbed energy is so big that it measures about one-quarter of the entire heat-trapping effect of carbon dioxide, said the study's lead author, Ian Eisenman, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. The Arctic grew 8 per cent darker between 1979 and 2011, Eisenman found, measuring how much sunlight is reflected back into space."
The same decrease in ice contributes to the weather circumstances that led to extremely low temperatures across parts of the United States this winter.

And increased heat in the oceans can (and likely will) lead to increased cloud formation, which will alter the planet's albedo in the opposite direction. How much and how soon? Nobody knows. But the planet has been both warmer and cooler than it is now during it's long history. Each time it's damped out cycles of extreme warming and extreme cooling all by itself.

If the climate isgoing to change because of our input, we should figure it how much and in what direction. It does appear that we are causing more rapid change than ever before short of a major cataclysm.

"Evolve at this particular point in history"? How wide is that historical point? 1000 years, 20,000 years? More? Less?

To expect things to stay the way they are just because we happened to evolve at this particular point in history is kind of silly. The climate *will* change. *We* must adapt.

So you are a proponent of stricter emission controls, carbon caps, and forced adoption of green technologies even if they are more expensive? Being as how
those are the surest ways of adapting rapidly enough to preserve the greatest amount of your freedom of choice as can be preserved over the next 30 to 50 years? Because that's the direction your train of logic is going toward.

It's a liberty issue. I'd rather be free to choose, even if I make the wrong choices.

The "liberty issue" here is making sure that those 0ne-Percenters who are either too short-sighted or too wrapped up in their own f

There is not a scap of evidence for what you claim in your post, unless of course you belive in the fanciful IRIS theory.Yes it's been hotter and colder in the distant past and those extremes usually coincided with mass-extinctions, 98% of all marine species went extinct during the Great Dying due to high levels of C02 turning the ocean acidic. It's not the planet that's in trouble it's our civilization, we can do our worst and life will enthusiastically bounce back after we have gone, just like it has with every other mass extiction.

Each time it's damped out cycles of extreme warming and extreme cooling all by itself

It did that by putting carbon into the ground as coal, peat and limestone, humans are doing their best to put it back in the atmosphere by burning the coal and peat, and releaseing the CO2 from limestone to turn it into concrete. The problem with your sig and issues such as this is that your wrong decisions have a negative effect on everyone else, you rights are not infinite, they end when they negate the rights of others.

98% of all marine species went extinct during the Great Dying due to high levels of C02 turning the ocean acidic.

The exact causes of the Permian–Triassic extinction event you reference are not known. High CO2 are but one hypothesis, alongside many others, all of which have at least some supporting evidence. CO2 may be the favorite whipping boy these days but it is a blatant falsification on your part to claim CO2 was the sole driver of this particular extinction event. CO2 may have been the sole cause. It may have been a contributing cause. Or, in the case of something like a catastrophic impact, it may have had *absolutely nothing* to do with the event. I don't know the answer, but you most certainly don't either.

The problem with your sig and issues such as this is that your wrong decisions have a negative effect on everyone else, you rights are not infinite, they end when they negate the rights of others.

And your wrong decisions don't have similar impacts were they to be implemented as national policy? Of course they do! But you're naively assuming you're the only "right" person in this discussion. You've made up your mind and that's the end of it, despite plenty of evidence to show that there just *might* be other climate factors out there that could be just as -- or perhaps even more than -- contributory to what's going on with the climate. It's that kind of dogmatism that marks you as a zealot, and subsequently makes logical people tune you out.

This cuts both ways. Your rights to insist someone stop something must have fact, not fear behind them. The current state of our understanding of the climate doesn't support the claims being made. The fact that a number of those claims have fallen is further evidence that it needs further study not immediate action.

The wait until the car drives off the cliff before thinking about putting on the brakes theorem.

The problem is that while on the surface, your statement sounds quite reasonable, there are a lot of people who simply will not accept any evidence at all, either because of personal incredulity, or being paid for their opinion. In the grand process of Baksheesh, It will take more than the gradual uptick in temperature to change any of that.

Plus of course, with the tendency for people to determine that climate is what they see out their window, it's cold today, so climate change isn't happening.
Which is to say, don't worry, Deniers have won.

That's what kills me about "the climate debate." Um, it's already happened. Enough CO2 to radically change the climate is already in the atmosphere. The oceans are already acidifying. The polar ice is already melted. The deniers can "debate" all they want, but they're still going to freeze in the winter from the disrupted jet stream and bake in the summer.

Many of the things that could be done and should have been begun decades ago will make life better for pretty much everyone.

Better housing standards - the roots of the Passivhaus dates back to the '70s and there are even older ideas that would have saved a lot of money if they'd been followed.

Solar power / heating - Carter's initiative from 1980, if it had been pursued would have changed the face of America and the breakthroughs we're waiting for may have come a decade or more ago.But his "gasohol" idea wou

First, is the planet getting warmer? On that I'd say there's general agreement, although it is not a 100% consensus.

It's a 99.something% consensus, which is as solid as any consensus among a large population is ever going to get. Out of 13,950 peer-reviewed climate articles from 1991-2012, only 24 reject global warming. (source [desmogblog.com])

Second, if it is getting warmer, is it caused in large part by human activity or is it part of some natural variation? This is the sticking point. If it's part of a natural variation in temperature -- and I will point out many such variations have happened in the past few million years, all without any input from humans -- then there is no need for us to radically alter our life to stop it because such actions will have no positive climatic effect while having a signficant negative effect on quality of life.

All the evidence we have for previous natural variations show them to be slow (or extremely rapid, as in catastrophically rapid - impact events or super-volcano eruptions); the changes we're seeing today is way too rapid to conform to any known natural cycle. The difference, of course, is that we're around and actively adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. In short, not a "natural variation".

Third, if it is anthropogenic, what should we do about it? Curtainling greenhouse emissions is an obvious choice, but is it the best one? How severe are the predicted warming effects? The economic and socio-political upheavals from drastic policy changes might be worse than adapting to a changing climate. And how much confidence can we have in the predictions regardless of how severe (or not) they may be?

We don't know; that's the problem. We don't have any crystal balls, so we don't know what the most effective strategy is, or exactly how severe the effects will be. What we do know is that large climate changes historically have been responsible for some of the most drastic extinction events we know of. And it's pretty easy to speculate about what a massive dying-off of e.g. marine life would do to coastal communities - as is the effect on the same communities of rising sea levels.

These are not minor issues. They deserve to be studied and debated *in depth* before drastic action is take, if for no other reason than to determine that we're taking the *most effective* action possible. This whole "the debate is settle and if you don't agree with us you're a denier" smacks of the same kind of thinking that gave us an Earth-centric cosmic model and burned "deniers" as heretics.

No, these are not minor issues, and the ramifications of the decisions are huge. In the end though, doing nothing is probably the worst decision; there is a tipping point somewhere (the edge of the cliff, so to speak) which going past that there is no turning back. More research and discussion is always welcome, but that should not and cannot stop us from starting to act - if nothing else to slow down the rate at which we're approaching that tipping point.

The analogy with the earth-centric cosmic models and burning of a few heretics is really stretching it when we're talking about the possibility of mass extinctions of not only humans but a lot of other species as well.

The earth will survive, and life itself will survive. The question is, will we? And even if we do, in what kind of society? One that has planned for such an eventuality, or one that has had to just react to it. One is liveable, the other is a post-apocalypse society; I know which one I'd rather (have my kids) live in.

The fact that a number of those claims have fallen is further evidence that it needs further study not immediate action.

What claims have fallen? When I hear specific claims from the contrarian side they're mostly 3rd hand misinterpretations of what was actually said and sometimes totally made up. If you want to know what the scientists really think read the IPCC reports paying close attention to the time scales and uncertainty they attach to the claims. We can argue about those claims but not the straw men I commonly hear.

The current state of our understanding of the climate doesn't support the claims being made. The fact that a number of those claims have fallen is further evidence that it needs further study not immediate action.

Which claims are you referring to? Do you mean the claims of the so-called contrarians (e.g. Judith Curry) that climate sensitivity to CO2 is 0 C/(W/m2)? Or Roy Spencer's claim of a cloud iris effect counteracting a greater sensitivity?

If so, you are right - observations have disproven these claims.

If not, we will need to know the specifics of the claims to judge the veracity of your own claim.

And increased heat in the oceans can (and likely will) lead to increased cloud formation, which will alter the planet's albedo in the opposite direction. How much and how soon? Nobody knows. But the planet has been both warmer and cooler than it is now during it's long history. Each time it's damped out cycles of extreme warming and extreme cooling all by itself.

From what I've seen we're past the tipping point and warming will continue. Further compounding things is Unforeseen Consequences, such as changes in chemistry of the upper water column, resulting in changes in sea life. Change global climates has usually been gradual, this is happening so rapidly only species of flora and fauna which can adapt will survive.

You don't seem to grasp just how much energy one degree change is. We are not talking about your local body or your local city, it's a whole friggin planet that has risen one degree over a very short period of time (again, planetary scale, not human).

It is most likely very bad, what should be worrying the crap out everyone is that currently less energy is being deposited where stuff happens, we have been on a cooling trend in the El Nino cycle and the sun has been unusually "inactive" - signs are that the E

More importantly with clouds, they do not just represent a change of moisture within then atmosphere but a change of ability due to temperature change of that atmosphere to hold that moisture without condensation occurring and clouds forming. So the fallacy is that with higher temperatures there will be more clouds, false, the truth is with higher temperatures more water will be held within the atmosphere, whether clouds form or do not form will be subject to local weather conditions and geography, nothing

What we know is that clouds, in the form of water droplets or ice, increases the albedo more than anything else that is likely to happen. But water vapor is a very strong greenhouse gas. Nobody is talking about the interplay of these factors, because nobody knows how to model them: how much of the increase in evaporation stays water vapor, what layers of the atmosphere will be affected. Another complication is that the atmosphere is expanding as it

But the planet has been both warmer and cooler than it is now during it's long history.

Yes that's true, but never in the planet's history has one species dominated in such sudden and strong force.

Each time it's damped out cycles of extreme warming and extreme cooling all by itself.

Precisely, because the changes have been relatively slow and there has been plenty of time for the feedbacks to occur. At the moment humanity is acting like a once per 100 000 years super volcano in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. Every year. On top of that we are sustaining a ridiculously big cattle population, which wouldn't be able to sustain itself while cutting trees down (and thus one negative feedback loop).

If an alien species started to pour greenhouse gases to atmosphere, inserts billion strong alien cattle population and cuts rain forests down etc I guess you would be fucking furious. So why aren't you now?

Looking on the bright side - thanks to all our wanton climate changing industrial activity and glacial public acceptance of the situation, we are getting our first experiences with terraforming. Admittedly, these experiences are like one's first experiences with learning how to paint - finger painting and messy, but with much larger existential consequences and no actual paint.

Hopefully "soon" we get a good foothold on Mars, and hopefully, and this sounds weird I know, there is NO life on Mars. Because that would give us a nice "sterile planetary lab" on which to experiment as we find ways to control global climates without operating on the only global climate we have available - which we happen to depend on completely and utterly for our survival.

Better to start experimenting on another one as soon as possible, because even when we get a handle on our climate changing activities, nature is standing by with a much larger list of climate changing activities which we will have to confront.

Maybe Venus too - if we can fix that place we can fix anywhere! So Mars would be like our lab and Venus is like our final exam.

You've already failed, they don't have magnetic fields. All the oxygen in the world is useless for real habitation without a magnetic field. Not a place I would want to live, with cosmic rays flying through my brain all the time.

People die all the time. I wasn't aware that was an argument for allowing them to be murdered...

The whole point of anthropogenic climate change isn't that we should stop climate change, it's that massive CO2 emissions from human sources over the last three centuries are producing far greater and more harmful changes than natural processes. This

A little bit of warming may be good, but there's widespread agreement that we want to avoid a warming of over 2 degrees Celsius [spiegel.de] due to the negative consequences. It now looks as though we won't even be able to meet that modest goal.

Please tell me the browser cache is screwing with me. Please tell me that my wife wants to have sex more often ( ok that isn't going to happen, I have a 12 and 15 year old) Do we really have Slashdot.org back?

What dataset are you using to show the planet is getting warmer? RSS, HADCRUT4/HADCRUT5, GISS, UAH) all show temperature stalled for at least 17 years (actually, a few show a slight negative trend - RSS and UAH show approximately -0.2 deg C per century cooling trend over the last 17 years).

Really, you can argue a bit about causation if you want, but at this point in time there is no credible argument about the actual trend in temperature. The idea that the earth is not warming is sheer poppycock.

Er... no. Seems like the U.S. got all our dose of winter this year. I don't think we (central Europe) had more than a couple of days below freezing point all winter. Quite often temperatures reaching above 10C.

'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change

"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened," Lovelock said. "The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," he said. "The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve ye

I wish that after their climate models were disproved time and time again they would try and find another model. That's science. But this has never been about science or the climate. Its about personal gain and subversive people's ideal society that takes away other people's rights to add to their own.

I wish that after their climate models were disproved time and time again they would try and find another model. That's science. But this has never been about science or the climate. Its about personal gain and subversive people's ideal society that takes away other people's rights to add to their own.

You are going to have to provide the citations and references for that.

Tell us about that incredible personal gain of these scientists? We need some numbers. You as the arbiter of the truth, need to do more than just tantalize us with your knowledge.

Maybe we should stop wasting money studying CO2 and check and make sure our sun is okay. I'd hate to clean up all the CO2, only to find out we should of been building ships to get us off planet before the earth shattering ka-boom.

Please check the link [drroyspencer.com]. You'll see the average IPCC model misses measured data by 0.6 deg C; the vast majority of models are off by 0.4 deg C or more. Given that there is so much wailing and gnashing of teeth over a projected 1 deg C change over the next half century, I'd say an error of 0.4 deg C over 17 years is significant.

Now there IS ONE model [wwu.edu] that actually got the current stall spot-on. Of course, that model doesn't rely upon CO2, and it's not by a climatologist (just a geologist), so many discount it. But considering he nailed the stall - and has a rational, reasonable explanation as well, it is worth considering.

You don't have a clue what they do with that grant money do you? It goes in to equipment, transportation, computer time, paying post-docs a stipend. Most of the time none of it goes in to the grantees pocket and if some of it does it's in lieu of the salary the scientist would be paid by their employer.

Yet, when a specific locality talks about an unusually warm spot of weather, we have people screaming "CLIMATE CHANGE!"

The problem is, there's too damn much noise at BOTH edges of the issue and it's completely drowning out the center.There's been WAY too much alarmist bullshit injected into the discussion, and it simply distorts said discussion away from the facts of the matter.

So how about we ignore the loud idiots on both sides, and just listen to the scientific community? Their consensus is available to anyone who cares to read it.

Oh, but I doubt you'd agree to that. Because, like most deniers, you probably think all the scientists in the world are in a great, globe-spanning conspiracy. You'll choose to ignore the 99.99% of scientists, and listen only to the guy who's saying what you want to hear. Who cares that he's on BP's payroll?

Nowhere did I say the issue was one-dimensional.That was you, putting words into my mouth and trying to skew the scope of the issue and maximize argument potential while minimally helpful in working towards a working, palatable solution.

Yes, the climate IS changing. Anyone denying that the climate is changing pretty much has blinders on.NO, we're NOT going to render the planet uninhabitable tomorrow. Acting like we're going to wake up at the end of this month and it's going to be 150 in the shade and only get hotter is unwarranted.Yes, we, as a species, need to live cleaner in a multitude of ways. Yeah, humans have been pretty frickin' nasty to the environment in the last thousand or so years, and in the last 2-300 years especially.NO, we should NOT simply dump millions/billions into trying whatever harebrained "band-aid" idea happens to float into the public consciousness today without extensive study. We need to KNOW that any massive changes we try to impose are going to work how we want and NOT further damage the environment.Yes, there are going to be changes in how people live. It's inevitable. But not ending human civilization in a heat crisis is probably worth it (depends on how I'm feeling about humanity on a given day).NO, we should NOT be reverting to living in caves, eating grass and rooting for grubs. And we really need to start shooting dickheads who scream about how horrible others are to the environment, yet are first class environmental nightmares themselves.

The Earth isn't, but people are, and a good many are living in fairly marginal areas, and not just in terms of agriculture. Will humanity die out. Most certainly not. But there will be consequences, and they will ultimately be fair more expensive than if we had tried to curb emissions.

Small problem with that is this summer had 50% less ice melt in the arctic

Says who? 50% less than what? 2012 was a record minimum year. 2013 has bounced back from that record low (in ice extend, not ice volume), but is still one of the years with the least sea ice extend science measurements began. And all the other similarly low extend years have been after 2005.

1. It would be nice if global climate change were to be debated not on the basis of politics (etc.) but on a rational, unbiased, scientific basis. If we would stick 100% to the science I think we would come to a sound conclusion in fairly short order. But factor in all the special interests (on all sides) and you get the current mess.

2. Having said that, I also think it is prudent to act as if climate change were real. This is in the Willilam James sense: if it's real, we

Not if it involves spending billions or trillions to simply reduce CO2 emissions, when it could have gone to medical or space research.

Or even in fact to reducing REAL pollution.

There's no sign anything like a runaway greenhouse effect is going to happen. CO2 levels have continued to increase even as global average temperatures have hit a lull. In the simplified glass jar experiments that is not what happens, so pretty obviously the earth is lots more complex than a glass jar with CO2 inside. The current rate of ocean level rise is less than foot over the next 100 years, not exactly a panic situation.

Lets get back to spending money on real issues instead of a bogeyman created to funnel large sums of government money in the hands of special interest groups or creating new things for financial moguls to get rich off of (looking at you carbon credits).

Running out of fossil fuels certainly is a real issue. We need to find alternative sources of energy because fossil fuels will run out some day. By developing the technologies now, we can drive the price down so it'll be easy to switch over to these sources long before fossil fuel costs skyrocket. And even dealing with one foot sea level rise will cost trillions, so we're committed to spend the money one way or the other. The issue is not whether or not to deal with climate change and develop alternative en

Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the environment that cause adverse changes. Just because CO2 does not directly cause adverse changes the way Chernobyl or Bhopal did does not mean that CO2 is not pollution.
Over thousands of years we have built our civilization around the relative stability of the global climate. A rapid increase in temperatures basically undermine all that investment we have made. Many of our largest population and industrial centers are in areas directly threatened b

Just because CO2 does not directly cause adverse changes the way Chernobyl or Bhopal did does not mean that CO2 is not pollution.

The fact that the entire plant kingdom relies on CO2 rules it out as pollution for me. The Earth's whole ecosystem is devoted to processing CO2. It's probably the most benign thing we could possibly be emitting.

A rapid increase in temperatures basically undermine all that investment we have made.

As I said it's clear that will not happen. CO2 levels have risen heavily, temperatu

Just because CO2 does not directly cause adverse changes the way Chernobyl or Bhopal did does not mean that CO2 is not pollution.

The fact that the entire plant kingdom relies on CO2 rules it out as pollution for me. The Earth's whole ecosystem is devoted to processing CO2. It's probably the most benign thing we could possibly be emitting.

You can use that standard it you want to but it's kinda useless in practice. Say it turns out that low levels of background radiation are good for us, does that mean radiation is no longer pollution? We use sound to talk, I guess I can open a night club next to your house because there's no such thing as noise pollution.

A much better standard is pollution is anything that's harmful when emitted in excess or the wrong circumstance, CO2 emissions are harming the planet right now, thus they're pollution.

A rapid increase in temperatures basically undermine all that investment we have made.

As I said it's clear that will not happen. CO2 levels have risen heavily, temperatures is flat. It's clear that the levels of XO2 we are producing are not enough to cause a runaway effect.

Right now the arctic ocean and Hudson Bay are 100% frozen due to this thing we call winter. Summer it is a different story.

The summer story is much more relevant though. In winter, when there is a low angle sun a few hours a day, sunlight is reflected back into space. In summer, when the sun is at a higher angle and there are only a few hours of night a day, increasingly large areas are not reflecting much sunlight back into space. I don't see how this invalidates TFA.

Funny you mention Hudson's Bay being frozen over, it hasn't happened in awhile. And it was such huge crisis back in the 70's and early 80's that the Government of Canada commissioned nearly 100 air compressors from Gardner Denver in Woodstock, Ontario to keep sections of the bay open so they could land sea planes to deliver supplies to remote communities. You'd think that landing on ice would be okay, the problem was two fold. There was never enough clean ice to make a runway. The other was high levels

Right now the arctic ocean and Hudson Bay are 100% frozen due to this thing we call winter. Summer it is a different story.

Second the world is getting cooler or stagnate in warming in recent years due to solar lull and dining as evident in the lack of solar flares. Last time this happened we had the mini ice age from 1400 - 1850. There is no scientific basis of global warming causing the polar vortex.

To respond to the parent of your post, yes when a jet-stream pushed air from the north pole over North America, and it got cold.As you point out, that doesn't mean the entire world is colder.And of course, obligatory XKCD http://www.explainxkcd.com/wik... [explainxkcd.com]

At some point the denialists will run out of runway, but sadly, by the time they do, any notion of being able to even mitigate the effects will be long gone. And probably around the same time, we'll start running out of cheap fossil fuels, so we'll get a nice double whammy.

But as long as the Koch Brothers make money today, well, fuck the future.

The sea ice extent is the surface area of ice that is floating in the sea. Unfortunately, there is more ice floating in the sea because it's calving off the land. The total volume or mass of ice in the Antarctic is decreasing [skepticalscience.com].

By measuring changes in gravity the GRACE satellites have documented the loss of land ice in Antarctica, mostly in the West Antarctic ice sheet. The rate has been around 50 Gt/year and appears to be accelerating.

There's a posting format switch in your posting options between "Plain Old Text" and "HTML Formatted". You have it on "HTML Formatted". Switch it to "Plain Old Text" which converts newlines to HTML <br/> elements.

There's a truckload of people constantly whining that climate science isn't backed up by observations. If you just took for granted that warmer poles meant darker poles which accelerated warming (a logical, but theoretical claim), you'd have people whining that they're just speculating and have no data to confirm it. This is scientists doing exactly what's being asked of them.